Equipment failure knocks out power for four hours in St. John Valley

FORT KENT, Maine — An equipment failure knocked out power to more than 2,100 people in the St. John Valley for about four hours Wednesday morning.

Susan Faloon, spokeswoman for Maine Public Service Co. and Bangor Hydro Electric, said Wednesday evening that the outage affected 2,104 customers in Fort Kent, Wallagrass, Eagle Lake, Winterville and the St. Froid Lake area. The outage began at 6:29 a.m., and power was restored to customers by 10:30 a.m., she said.

The company does not believe that the outage was weather related, Faloon said, but rather was caused by broken insulators on utility poles on a section of Route 11. She also said that some power lines came down on a section of Route 161 in New Canada.